Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Koran. War and Peace

Ridicule and derision are common tools of missionary faith but Judaism is not a missionary religion and Christianity has, for the most part, albeit reluctantly, recognised this
theologically toxic legacy. That leaves
Islam as the driving revolutionary force behind theological agitation for
proselytizing around the world.

Samuel P. Huntington (The Clash
of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order) wrote that there was a
clash of civilisations between the West and the Islamic world. While the Left as
an institution, and many of our leaders in government, panicked and were
desperate then, as they are today, to disprove his thesis, they continue to make
every excuse to justify violence and terror committed in the name of Islam. This
propensity towards violence is a tragically common response to every slight or
perceived insult that befalls the Muslim faithful.

It is certainly undeniable that
the Koran constrains the fundamentalist from engagement in a dialogue of equals
while anyone who reads the Koran without questioning it, must be left with
a feeling of superiority and disdain towards both Christians and Jews. At best, those that read the Koran are
vicariously acculturated to ridicule and mistrust of the non-Muslim. Even at a superficial level it cannot but
encourage disinclination towards integration into Western Society. A recent
study revealed that the fourth generation of Muslims living in the West is less
likely to be integrated into the society than any other group in history. The
Koran and the Hadith (sayings attributed to Muhammad) are problematic for their
subversive theological opposition to modern democracy.

Islam believes Muhammad to be the
most righteous man who ever lived (it could not possibly be a woman). “Let us
now use our reason: how can a mortal woman give birth to God?” (A Muslim
missionary booklet titled “Muslim-Christian Dialogue” by HM Baagil M.D.) Every word was transmitted by the Muslim God
Allah, and therefore, it must all be true, correct, unalterable and
unquestionable. “We use the Koran as the standard to correct man-made changes
in previously revealed scriptures.” i.e. Christianity and Judaism. (Ibid)

If we are already perfected, then
in the pursuit of ‘righteousness’ or the ‘ideal’ we can do no wrong. That warped mindset led humanity to the
mobile killing squads, to Auschwitz and to the
gas chambers. The Holocaust denial
industry is an important part of contemporary Islamic thought because it
assumes a perfection marred only by the opposition of the infidel.

Those that
deny the Shoah are just as likely to embrace it a second time round.

In an exquisite, even brilliant
double bind we are informed that to question the Koran is to insult all Muslims
and therefore to encourage violence. But to not question is to acquiesce by our
silence to a manuscript that is unremittingly hateful and disparaging both of
our respective cultures and of our shared civilisation. Every act of kindness
in recorded history, every good idea, every positive act of creation is
theologically Islamic. This is saying that early Islamic writings are not the
mythic creation story (and later exegesis) of some desert tribal leader living towards
the end of the 6th Century CE. Instead Islam ‘represents’ the one and only
legitimate faith with an unbroken lineage of wisdom dating back to the
beginning of history. Abraham, Moses and Jesus are Muslims, their thoughts and
acts are a precious Islamic heritage. Cultural theft, plagiarism and the wholesale
rape of entire civilisations is justified as no more than successive rebranding exercises carried out by the faithful of Allah.
Our lands and everything we own, our cultural heritage and our past are
all obliterated as a logical consequence of our flawed and theologically
redundant existence. You and me? We are followers of an imperfect and
corrupted system; our religious beliefs, a lie and a deceit.

If we question Islamic logic we
are blind to perfection – but then this is also written in the Koran. The
faithful are warned to be aware of our kind.

In Medieval times, Jews were
sometimes forced to dispute with the local bishop on a point of canon law. If the Rabbi won, he was put to death and his
entire community expelled. If he lost, the community was forced to
convert to Christianity. Islam plays by
different rules but by stealing our collective past it has no need to debate
any of its actions either in the past or in the present. More ominously, it has no need to consider
the ethical validity of any of its planned and future activities.

All fundamentalist faith is
retrogressive but Islam has not moved on from Muhammad’s genocide of the Jewish
tribes and pagan peoples of Arabia of the 6th
Century CE. Islam is almost 400 years
late in learning the lessons of the Age of Reason. And while the Enlightenment
began to percolate into scholars’ minds considerably earlier than the 17th
Century, the darkness in the heart of Islam is an ongoing tragedy that can only
worsen as we appease the bigots. And
from our side, the reaction will cause much greater friction between our
civilisations even as some Muslim scholars beseech their compatriots to
exercise self-control.

Even then, the righteous Muslim is an insignificant minority whose protestations are inevitably after
the fact and only heard, once we infidel have been thoroughly and righteously
horse-whipped for our insolence.

One of the arguments for the
authenticity of the Koran is that Muhammad was illiterate; therefore he could
not have known the sayings and teachings of either Judaism or of Christianity (because
he grew up in pagan Mecca).
When the Jews of Muhammad’s time refused to accept his new faith he slaughtered
them without mercy. His genocide of the Jewish tribes was legitimised by their
refusal to embrace his wholesale cultural theft of their religious heritage. 'Religious' Muslims view Judaism as a racial
ideology while the secularists cover the other side of the debate by
recognising Jews as a religious group. Both
sides in the Islamic world can then explain and justify the reason for
excluding Jews from the Near-East: As a racial group Jews have no religious
right to reside anywhere but particularly not in the Holy
Land; as a religious group Jews have no racial right of residence
because their history is ‘manufactured’.
As a consequence they are a foreign and wholly incompatible implant that
does not belong in the region. Listen to the words of Mahmud Ahmadinejad and
weep for the ethical failure that prevents us from challenging the holy racism
and religious demagoguery of this evil man and his multitude of followers.

As propaganda this narrative of
hate has something for every bigot – including the hegemonic left-wing and liberal
Western elite.

Muslims believe that God’s first
command to Muhammad was ‘Iqra’ (read) an interesting thought if it is true that
he was illiterate. But if reading is confined to the Koran and Hadith (the
‘collected’ sayings of the Prophets – produced in the 8th and 9th
Century, some 120 -260 years after he is alleged to have died) then there can
only be one interpretation of history and it is one that denies the legitimacy
of any and all other narratives that do not demonstrate the superiority of the
Muslim view of history.

In this time of appeasing the
Islamic faithful, instead of asking what we achieve by our tolerance we should
be demanding to know what we receive in return for our sacrifice.

1 comment:

Very interesting. Islam has never gone through a reformation process and does not have a history of textual analysis or criticism. I agree, this needs to be challenged. Unfortunately the power of big oil and fear of fanatics serve as brakes.